Homily for Feast of Baptism of the Lord

Homily for the Feast of
the Baptism of the Lord

Jan. 10, 2021
Collect
Holy Name of Jesus, New Rochelle, N.Y.
St. Pius X, Scarsdale, N.Y.              

“Almighty ever-living God, when Christ had been baptized in the River Jordan and as the Holy Spirit descended upon him, you solemnly declared him your beloved Son” (Collect).

Christ didn’t need to be baptized by John.  He had no sins to repent.  In fact, in St. Matthew’s account of the matter, which we read last year, there was a little verbal tussle between John and Jesus about it.  Jesus persisted, not for cleansing but for sign value (Matt 3:13-17).

The Collect today explains that, 1st by pretty much saying what the gospels say, then by going into the sign, the meaning of what happened.

After John has baptized Jesus, something marvelous happens.  The Holy Spirit comes down upon Jesus—appearing like a dove, St. Mark says (1:10)—and a voice, the voice of God the Father, declares that Jesus is his beloved Son (1:11 and Collect).  This, incidentally, is a manifestation of a most fundamental Christian truth, the Holy Trinity.  The Father and the Holy Spirit are both active in what we interpret as the consecration of Jesus, God’s Son, for his earthly mission.

St. Mark says the voice from heaven speaks to Jesus:  “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (1:11).  Did the human mind of Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s son, know he was God’s Son?  Our Christian faith is that he was fully human, like us.  Thus, as a man, he may have come only gradually to know and to understand his identity, that he was the Son of God in a unique sense, completely unlike you and me.  This appearance of the Holy Spirit and this voice are a revelation to him.  And, in fact, as the gospels go on to tell us, immediately after his baptism Jesus will go into the desert for 40 days of prayer and fasting.  This is his reaction to the heavenly revelation.  We suppose that in the desert he was wrestling with the meaning of what he’d seen and heard at the River Jordan.  What does it mean to be the “beloved Son” of God?  In what way has he been “pleasing” to the Father, and how shall he continue to “please” him?  His answers to those questions will come in his temptations by the Devil, his public ministry, and his suffering and death.  The Father will answer the questions and validate Jesus’ answers by raising him from the dead.

Now, we ask, what does Jesus’ baptism mean for us, his disciples?  The Collect identifies us as God’s “children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit.”  Christian theology teaches us that by his baptism Christ made holy the waters of the world when they’re linked with the Holy Spirit.  As you know, Jesus told Nicodemus (in John 3:5) that in order to enter the kingdom of God we must be “born of water and Spirit.”  This is being “born again” or “born from above,” depending on how one translates the Greek word St. John uses, άνωθεν.  Our own sacramental Baptism, with water poured over us (or being completely immersed in water) and the invocation of the Holy Trinity, makes us, like Jesus of Nazareth, God’s beloved children.  Unlike Jesus, God’s Son by his own eternal nature, we become God’s children by adoption, by a “second birth,” as Charles Wesley puts it in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”  The water of the Jordon over which the Spirit of God hovered becomes all the water of the world that the Holy Spirit may touch, and so we are born “from above.”

The Collect then prays that God’s children—us—“may always be well pleasing to you.”  As Jesus was—and remains—well pleasing to his Father, so we pray to be.  The 1st reading today (from Year A), from the prophet Isaiah, tells us of a vital way of pleasing God:  by being people of justice, “bringing forth justice to the nations” (42:1).  The 1st meaning of the word justice in the Scriptures means being in a right relationship with God, being upright.  But it also means what we ordinarily mean, fairness, right.  If there’s one point that’s been raised in our country during 2020 and even during the shocking, shameful mob insurrection at the Capitol last Wednesday, it’s the desire for justice in our society:  for fairness, for right, for a right relationship between all the people of our country and their public authorities and among all the people themselves; both citizens and non-citizens, regardless of race, national origin, faith, social standing, or political party.  Everyone is God’s child; everyone is made in God’s image; everyone deserves to be treated fairly and with dignity; everyone is, under God, my sister or brother.  If we can’t do that basic justice, we can’t be pleasing to God like our Lord Jesus.  If we try to do that, we can say that Jesus is our brother.